(From the Zephyr archives) Bonfire of the Vanities…by Doug Meyer

An excerpt:

“Can the natural world be saved if we are not animals? Or better yet, can the natural world be saved once we utter that damning phrase of segregation: the natural world?”
“I love this nature business as we create a place in our minds and in our reserves that repudiates ourselves. We have so many reasons for this nature business and none of them are honest. Because being honest in these areas invites a messy disorder that this business is about abolishing.”

The critique proposed official wilderness as the epitome of establishment environmentalism, both putting bandaids on fundamental problems of national character and history. Once we’ve saved little bits of the wilderness, we feel better about the horror of industrial civilization. But there’s a still more alluring fiction embedded in the concept. The duality between wilderness and the society that created the wilderness produced the dream among environmentalists of constraining the USA through legal and political means. Ultimate example: the Sierra Club’s effort to persuade the American public to drain Lake Powell, which would have effectively starved the American way of life in the Southwest. Blowing up the dam with a houseboat clearly had a better chance. The voters now view environmentalists as professional liars in the same class as politicians and the media.

To read more of Doug’s article, click the image below:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2011/12/01/bonfire-of-the-vanities-by-doug-meyer/